Hanno Soans

PreviousNext

NATO NAFTA III-VII, 2011

blood on the wall

Series Absolut Nafta III – VII consists of five texts of blood commissioned by EKKM from Hanno Soans. In 2011 the institution and the artist signed a contract with a € 100 purchase amount, which is every time coupled with a Karl Fazer hazelnut chocolate, saying that EKKM has the right to demand five times 10 mg of artist venous blood. That makes the price of one piece and the price per dose 20 euros, which is the usual street price for a drug of choice.

Hanno Soans’ series Absolut Nafta I-VII began in 2003 at the the Tallinn Art Hall exhibition Screensaver. The exhibition displayed the first two works. Absolut Nafta I, which consisted of a painting received as a gift from the artist Sirje Runge, to which Soans added a golden dollar mark. Absolut Nafta II was a quote from the suggestive beginning of Astrid Lindgren’s cult children’s book Master Detective Blomkvist saying ‘Blood, no doubt!’.

Absolut Nafta III was a pice commissioned by EKKM in 2011 for the exhibition Museum Files I: Collected Principles. The blood on the wall read ‘People’s Voice’, which was a quote from the Estonian avant-garde classic Leonhard Lapin’s painting of the same name. Two months later, at the exhibition Darkness, Dark, Absolut Nafta IV returned to the series’ begining, re-using Kalle Blomkvist citations, which partly perodied its new environment.

Hanno Soans: ‘When Anders Härm, offering me a symbolic fee, asked if the work could be included to the EKKM collection, I was thinking, due to not having any more paintings, of creating a similar relation with the estonian avant-garde, as I did the first time. So with a reference to a well-known painting of Leonhard Lapin, I made the text ‘People’s Voice’.’